Apple is building telemetry into Safari to detect — and log, when Google pushes Chrome or its own app to iPhone and iPad users browsing on Apple’s browser. The code appeared in iOS 27.2 beta 2 and remains active in beta 3, though it’s not documented in Apple’s release notes and won’t necessarily ship with the final version of iOS 27.2.
It’s a test. But it’s a telling one. It shows Apple watching how Google steers users away from Safari. Even as regulators watch Apple back.
The timing isn’t incidental. The UK Competition and Markets Authority has asked Google to prove it still competes with Safari. Google pointed to its Chrome banners on google.com as evidence. In the EU, Apple faces ongoing Digital Markets Act scrutiny over browser choice screens, and whether those screens truly let users pick freely.
So Apple’s new logging doesn’t just track banners. It tracks sign-in status, banner visibility, and user action: tap or ignore. It injects JavaScript into Google’s homepage and search results to spot Chrome promotion elements, then checks for associated links. Including custom URL schemes and App Store IDs for Chrome and the Google app.
Every interaction gets tagged: accepted, dismissed, or unseen. No data is confirmed to be sent off-device. Apple hasn’t said what it would do with the logs, if anything. There’s no public statement.
No feature name. No roadmap. Just unannounced, undocumented code in a beta. That silence matters.
Because while Apple hasn’t changed Safari’s default status or altered its search deal with Google, it has started measuring how that deal plays out in real time. On users’ devices. IOS 27.2 is expected to launch globally in late October. If this telemetry ships, it’ll arrive silently, with no user-facing toggle, no privacy nutrition label, and no mention in Apple’s official documentation.
Regulators will notice. So will developers who monitor Safari’s behaviour. And so will Google. Whose own compliance arguments now face a countermeasure built into the very browser it’s trying to redirect people from.
MDFiled by The Mobile Desk
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